


Niʻihau

by wildechilde17



Series: The business trilogy [15]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Advent Calendar, Dissociation, F/M, Rituals, Routine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-19
Updated: 2016-12-19
Packaged: 2018-09-09 18:57:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8908150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wildechilde17/pseuds/wildechilde17
Summary: Clintasha Advent Calendar Day fourteen: Routines





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TrillianWho](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrillianWho/gifts), [laraemrys](https://archiveofourown.org/users/laraemrys/gifts), [irishleesh93](https://archiveofourown.org/users/irishleesh93/gifts).



"Coulson!" he yells across the hanger, the older man in the dark suit looks up and then his lips tighten like he has been inflicted with a sudden headache.  Clint jogs across the floor towards him regardless, "This mean Romanoff's back?"

"My presences is not tied to the vagaries of your lives, I have my own work too," he answers like he wants to remove reading glasses and pinch the bridge of his nose. "In this instances, yes, Agent Romanoff is back."

"Aw, you mean we have to share you?" Clint grins, sliding easily past Coulson's tone. "Everything went okay with the mission?"

"Agent Barton, you are aware of the definition of classified?"

"I know," he waves Coulson off, "worst secret agent you know. Gotta go."

“Romanoff?" he says as he raps on her door, she wasn't where he expected her to be.

"Agent Barton?"

She is sitting unnaturally still on the single bunk, still dressed as some other woman. She is wearing some other woman's make up and there is a reddish brown smear where her sedate collar meets her neck.

"Nat? I went to the gym first, thought for sure I'd find you giving a gymnastics display."  She doesn't move but her green eyes follow him as he enters the spartan room. "You injured?" He frowns. "You still got all that make up... Nat?"

"Why are you here, Agent Barton?" She raises her eyebrow as she speaks.

"Manila finished up earlier..." She watches him and he feels as if she has never heard of Manila, the mission, maybe even the city. "Um... hey, Natasha. I don't want to be overstepping here but... You are back. Natasha? I'm gonna...," he huffs, scratches at the back of his neck and stares at her a moment longer before beginning, “Natasha, let's get that shit off your face.”

"Stop saying that name."

"Yeah," he says letting the smile and the softly, softly drop. "Okay. Not gonna happen. I got a rule, someone says 'that name' like it isn't their name and, call it gut instinct, it's time to say it a whole lot more. Natasha." He gives her a sharp nod and leaves her for the ensuite bathroom. "Shit," he says and it bounces off the tinny interior. "There's none of those cucumber things that take off, fuck it. We are going full on hand towel. It's gonna be hot, Natasha, like in first class on the fancy airlines."

When Natasha Romanoff becomes someone else there is something in the way she raises her eyebrow that tells him someone else is calling the shots. There is more height, more angle, a part of a second where the brow raise should have been and wasn’t and a part of a second where it shouldn’t have been and was.

There are other off notes too, things that hover at the edges of his perception. One day, he thinks, he’ll catch it all before he goes blundering in with his too keen chatter. 

He knows she isn’t gone entirely; she just slips backwards letting other parts of her take control.  He knows she isn’t lost to him but what she does is so much more extreme than any other shadow he has ever worked with.

He passes the wet towel back and forth between his hands certain that she would take the towel and let it burn if he handed it to her before it cools.

He crouches and moves his hand forward to touch her face, her face that some other part of her is wearing right now. 

She grimaces, and dashes the towel from his hand.

“I can do it myself.”

Her nails are a weird browny pink color.

“Okay. Okay,” he says as he stands again.  He can’t stop looking at the weird color of her nails. “You know? I reckon I can get some remover stuff for your nails from Mockingbird’s quarters. Just don't tell her I broke in okay? Natasha?” She doesn’t respond only continuing to dab at her face with the towel. “You know when you were gone over the three months I started to miss you being a pain in my ass.”

“Over three months,” she echoes and lowers the towel from her face.

“Yeah, almost four now,” he says slowly, “Natasha, who gave you the black eye?”

“They're dead now,” she says coldly. His hand clenches into a fist. 

“Get changed. We're going to the gym,” he orders, “You can throw yourself round the bars as long as you... Natasha?” He is too relieved when she looks up, the blue grey shadow across her cheek bone and the pinker slash in the corner that stains the delicate skin beneath her eye comes into stark relief. “As long as you want, okay.”

“Barton.”

“Yeah.”

“I'm back,” she says like she isn’t certain but still isn’t asking the question. “SHIELD.”

“Yeah, you are,” he agrees anyway. 

“Leave.”

“Uh?” he says searching her face for some sign that she hasn’t slipped away again.

“I'm not going to go to the gym in this.”

He gives her a single nod, “Right.”

They lived lives that prevented traditions and actively abhorred routine. Routines get spies killed and as assassins they've used that to their advantage too many times to forget it.

But.

Routines like family, like friends, form a strong feedback loop always reminding you of who you are. If self is truly nothing but a story you build and tell yourself then they were always at the very precipice of forgetting who or what they were or supposed to be.

It made those few routines they allowed themselves all the more sacred.

When Natasha Romanoff has been someone else for longer than a day she strips their clothes from her body, their makeup, their markings and then he will find her throwing herself around parallel bars in the same way he loses himself in the pattern of breathing, drawing, holding and releasing.  It is a well-trodden path back to the narrative of them.

**Author's Note:**

> I am sorry about the delay in back filling these, the free day is intended to be for a marketplace update and the children prompt for a Starbucks update and I will do my best to get these to you ASAP. Was feeling rather un-mused over the weekend I'm afraid.


End file.
